


Sing, Choir of Angel

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Can Sing, Aziraphale has anxiety, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Other, luckily crowley knows just what to say, performance anxiety if we're being specific here, rated for some suggestive behavior, these two are agonizingly soft, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 8 for the advent calendar of prompts.Aziraphale has a secret talent. Crowley is a big fan.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 17
Kudos: 188





	Sing, Choir of Angel

“- consider it, Mr. Fell. We could really use a man like you.”

The woman’s voice is low, secretive, and sends Crowley’s eyebrows flying towards his hairline. He shuts the shop door with uncharacteristic caution, to prevent the bell from chiming. What was she proposing to his angel?

“My dear, I’m quite flattered, truly I am.” Aziraphale’s voice, in contrast, has the barely concealed peevishness that usually only arises when Crowley is being particularly stubborn - or a customer refuses to leave. This seems like neither of those occasions, however. 

Crowley drifts closer to the voices, intrigued.

“It’s not often one finds a man of your considerable talents, Mr. Fell. And it’s such a shame to keep a gift like that all to yourself.”

“I’m not -” Aziraphale spies Crowley lurking - well, leaning - against the bookshelves, and relief flits across his face, followed quickly by the sparkle of an idea, and something oddly like triumph. “I’m not keeping it to myself,” he finishes.

The woman, who had somehow crowded an angel - _the_ angel! The Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate! Crowley won’t be letting him live _this_ down for months - against the stacks, glances down the row. She spots Crowley and her face cycles rapidly, from surprise to contemplation to resignation, before finally settling on bitter disappointment. 

“Well then,” she replies, and steps backwards, out of Aziraphale’s personal space. A little tension bleeds from Crowley’s spine as the angel takes a relieved breath. “You could have just said so.”

As she passes Crowley, she growls, “You’d better appreciate what you’ve got.”

“I do,” he replies in kind, and revels in the ugly scowl that twists across her face.

Then she is gone, the shop door jingling her departure, and Aziraphale is breezing past him. “Is it time for lunch?”

“Hang on.” Crowley turns in place to keep the angel in sight as he heads for the counter, but otherwise doesn’t abandon his lounge against the shelf. “What was all that about, then?”

“Hmm? That? Oh, nothing.”

Aziraphale fidgets a stack of books first one way, then the other, then finally back to center, where they’d started. He is determinedly not looking at Crowley’s face, where a grin is tugging at the edges of the demon’s mouth. When Crowley pushes away from the shelf to circle the angel, grinning openly now, Aziraphale’s shoulders hunch under the scrutiny.

“Nothing?” Crowley parrots, voice even lower than the woman’s had been. “She was so interested in your… _talentsss_.”

The word comes out sibilant, obscene. Aziraphale’s hands flutter around a first edition Wilde.

“It’s nothing important, Crowley.”

“No?” He steps in close behind the angel, crowding him up against the counter, bracketed on either side by the cage of Crowley’s arms. “Don’t lie, angel. Clearly you’ve shown her sssomething.”

It’s hilarious, to wind the angel up like this, get him all flushed and flustered. Crowley’s neither jealous nor upset - and Aziraphale, for all his fidgeting, knows it.

Which means it’s something embarrassing, and Crowley is dying to know.

“Is it the magic act?” he guesses, plastering himself to the angel’s back and speaking directly into his ear. When Aziraphale shakes his head in silent answer, his curls brush Crowley’s face. “No? Not magic. Hmm. I don’t suppose it would be bookbinding, then, would it?”

Another shake. Crowley slithers infinitesimally closer, slides one hand to wrap around a plush hip. “Something more…sssensual?”

A delicious shudder trips down the angel’s spine and spills across, into Crowley’s body, even as Aziraphale is shaking his head yet again.

“She wantsmtginkwire,” he mutters.

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that. She what?”

Aziraphale huffs, then announces to the countertop, “She wants me to join her choir.”

Crowley stills, nonplussed, and the suggestiveness previously dripping from his voice dries up in surprise. “You don’t sing.”

“I do, sometimes,” the angel hedges.

“Then how is it I’ve never heard you in six thousand years, hmm? Six whole millennia, and not a single note from you.”

“I don’t do it where people can _hear_.”

After a long beat of expectant silence, Aziraphale adds, “She heard me by accident.”

Crowley sways to the right, leans his entire weight on his right arm, braced against the counter. Lifts one interrogatory brow. Aziraphale, already fidgety, crumbles without meeting his gaze.

“It was Christmas, a - a few years ago. I’d thought the shop was closed. I didn’t realize she’d come in until - until I turned around, and…” Aziraphale sighs and turns pleading eyes on Crowley. “She’s come back every few months for the past three years, trying to recruit me for her choir. She’s very pushy.”

Crowley considers this for a moment.

“I get why you didn’t join them,” he finally replies, ignoring Aziraphale’s inquisitive hum. “Busy raising the Antichrist and preventing Armageddon and all that. But what’s stopping you now?”

Aziraphale stares at him for two seconds, three, then manages, “I - well, I’m not very _good_.”

Crowley, keenly aware of the venom in the woman’s voice as she’d snarled at him in defeat, and vaguely remembering something about angels and perfect pitch, snorts. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Aziraphale, looking a little like - what was the phrase, a duck in the headlights? No, a _deer_ in the headlights - shakes his head again, and steps away. “Oh, Crowley, I couldn’t -”

“C’mon, Aziraphale, the human clearly thinks you’re good. And I have _excellent_ taste in music, you know I’ll be honest,” he adds, but the angel doesn’t even scoff at his boast and is still shaking his head, backing away. Crowley, realizing Aziraphale isn’t being coy but is instead genuinely nervous, switches gears.

“Hey. Hey, don’t worry about it. I don’t need to hear you sing if you don’t want,” he reassures.

He _does_ need to hear the angel sing, but that…that’s a personal want. The jealousy curling in his gut at the thought of a human, of _that_ human, pushy and nameless, knowing a side of his angel that Aziraphale is too shy to share, is his problem to wrestle with.

He follows Aziraphale as he retreats to the back room, lays a brief touch on his shoulder as he passes. “Nevermind, angel,” he adds, gentle and sincere. “I won’t press.”

Aziraphale watches as Crowley sprawls across his customary spot on the sofa. Considers him as he lounges, lazy and content, scrolling through something on his little mobile phone. Opens his mouth to answer, but what comes out -

_“O holy night  
The stars are brightly shining,  
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth;  
Long lay the world  
In sin and error pining,  
‘Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”_

Crowley is looking at him, now, phone dangling listlessly from one hand. Nervous, Aziraphale breathes in.

_“A thrill of hope  
The weary world rejoices  
For yonder breaks  
A new and glorious morn.”_

This is where he’d stopped, before - where he’d realized his error, that he wasn’t alone in the shop, all those years ago. But Crowley’s eyes are wide over his sunglasses, and the demon’s focus has birthed a warm thrum of confidence in his chest, so he continues - a deep breath down to the bottom of his lungs, voice filling the shop -

_“Fall on your knees  
O hear the angel voices!  
O night divine!  
O night, when Christ was born.  
O night divine  
O night  
O night divine.”_

He falters, there, the confidence flickering and dying out, the warmth fizzling into something colder, squirmier. He tugs at the bottom of his waistcoat, looks away.

“Like I said, I -”

“You can’t join the choir, angel.”

The bottom drops out of his stomach and he flushes, burning red with shame. “I know, I -”

“If you sing like that around humans, they’ll know exactly what you are.”

There is a softness to Crowley’s voice, a wondering; when Aziraphale finally looks at him, confused and uncertain, the demon looks as if he’s caught a glimpse of something unimaginably precious. “What I - what -”

Crowley is rising, now, crossing the room, taking Aziraphale’s hands and stilling their nervous flutter with the warm press of his fingers. “Angel. Angel, that was - that was incredible.”

He brings their joined hands to his face, presses a kiss to the tangle of Aziraphale’s fingers. His eyes, only half-hidden by the tilt of his sunglasses, are suspiciously bright. “You’re incredible.”

The previously lost bottom of Aziraphale’s stomach is now lodged somewhere in his throat. “You really think…?”

“Angel, I _know_ ,” Crowley reassures, and Aziraphale tugs his hands free to wrap them around his demon, and Crowley’s fingers are framing his angel’s face, and they’re kissing, sweet and soft and slow.

When they finally separate, minutes later, Crowley rests their foreheads together, tangles his hands in clouddust curls. “I’m so glad I have you,” he confesses.

Aziraphale melts, and smiles, and holds him closer. Presses a tiny kiss to the edge of his mouth.

“Thank you, darling. I love you, Crowley.”

“Love you too, angel.”

Later, deep into the evening, partway through a third bottle of wine, Crowley looks up from where his head is laid across Aziraphale’s lap as the angel threads his fingers through signal fire hair. Asks, eyes and voice and want unguarded, unhidden, “Will you sing for me sometimes, angel?”

Aziraphale looks down at him, brushes a stray curl from his forehead, and falls, impossibly, even more in love.

“Anytime, my dear. Whenever you like.”


End file.
